Sunday, November 14, 2010

MiFi to the rescue

Yesterday we reached our last straw of aggravation with the WiFi at our location. Having to go and reset the WiFi here several times a day had gotten to be just too much of a hassle.

We decided to purchase a MiFi from Verizon. The credit card size unit is sleek, less then a half inch thick. The MiFi creates a WiFi hotspot and is password protected to keep unwanted users from connecting and stealing bandwidth. The cost was a bit high however we are not under a service contract or equipment lease and can stop service at anytime we choose.

We are starting out with 10 gigabytes a month for $80 + tax. The Verizon MiFi 2200 set us back $288.89 and we will be billed for the 10 gigabytes next month.

How it works for us

We don’t have laptop computers like most RV’er do. We have two desktop computers and neither came WiFi ready. To enable us to use a WiFi connection we had to install hardware into each desktop. We did this by purchasing two EUB-362 EXT - High-Power Long Range Wireless G USB Adapters. These would locate any WiFi signal in the area that we could connect to.

To setup the MiFi we just turned it on, let it connect it’s wireless communication to the nearest cell tower and it was ready to use. When we booted up the computers they were able to find the new WiFi hotspot we created. We highlighted our WiFi connection from the list, clicked connect and entered our password and bingo we were online again.